Quick Gameplay Thoughts: November 9

Hi folks,
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These posts will often contain talk about future work we&#039;re doing, or planning to do, that isn&#039;t yet guaranteed to ship. The nature of the work could change or, depending on what we discover, projects mentioned may get delayed or even stopped. If you&#039;d like to see a Tweet whenever a new one of these posts goes up: https://twitter.com/RiotMeddler
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**Better balancing some tanks in both regular and Pro play**
In addition to our other preseason goals we&#039;re also putting some work into narrowing the effectiveness difference some champions have in regular play versus in pro play. Right now we&#039;re working on Sejuani, Galio and Ornn, each of whom&#039;s been a challenge to balance in both contexts.
Correcting that sort of difference generally involves moving power out of places that are much more effective in pro and putting it elsewhere. Can also involve removing unintended barriers to playing a champ successfully. A good example of both from last year was the Alistar update in 6.22. Some of his CC got shifted from immediate to delayed (E stun), which, along with better buffering on his WQ combo, has narrowed the gap dramatically. He still goes through periods of really high pick/ban rates in pro play, but is in a much better state in regular games (doesn&#039;t sit in the low to mid 40s win rate wise for example).
Details on the champs we&#039;re currently looking at below. Please note this is all still work in progress, so likely some things change substantially as we continue testing. Likely at least some of these champs&rsquo; changes don&rsquo;t ship in 8.23 either.
* Galio
**Nerfs**: Waveclear&#039;s disproportionately powerful in pro, so we&#039;re cutting back on that, with Q damage over time moving to % only which is much less effective against minions. E is then also getting reduce damage to non champions. Finally his ult no longer knocks up more in the center, given coordinated teams are able to get much more value out of that bonus.
**Buffs**: More upfront damage on Q and a significantly lower mana cost at higher ranks. Allows more harass, making optimal Galio play less about wave clearing. On the same note his E&#039;s getting both a faster dash speed and a slightly lower cast time, making landing it on targets actually trying/able to dodge more feasible.
* Sejuani
**Nerfs**: Reducing Sejuani&#039;s CC power, targeting durations on Q and E, plus potentially removal of the brief W slow. Also testing lower range on E activation.
**Buffs**: Adding strength to her later in the game with better per level health, armor and attack speed. Also just adding damage to Q,W,E, some at rank 1, but mainly loaded into rank up damage. Early game power&#039;s highly favored in pro, so scaling stats can be good levers for addressing excessive performance differences.
* Ornn
**Nerfs**: Targeting Ornn not winning trades so reliably in lane with removal of the W shield. R1 slow scales off distance travelled, so less power from just dropping it on someone. R2 knockup reduced on subsequent targets, cutting further power from his initiation and general team fighting.
**Buffs**: Higher per level armor and HP here too. Return of Unstoppable on the W, high W damage, revised passive. Ornn changes have the most going on, with more other reasons mixed in as well, rather than a strong focus on just narrowing the pro versus regular play gap.
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**Rune Stats and Different Classes**
The changes to rune stats coming in preseason will likely impact some classes more than others. Our plan there is to see where things land and then make quick reactive changes as needed, rather than trying to compensate before scale of effect is clear. Our expectation is that tank supports will probably be one of the most affected groups, given they&#039;re end up trading the scaling Health Resolve currently offers, which is really good on them, for a probably weaker mixture of stats. Many of them are quite strong going into preseason, so that&#039;s still a case where we believe the best approach is to assess and react quickly, rather than potentially prematurely buffing.
http://ddragon.leagueoflegends.com/cdn/6.24.1/img/champion/Ziggs.png

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